Discussion Meeting on Emergence and Evolution of Biological Complexity

Biology, at all scales from molecular to cellular to populations, provides quintessential examples of complex adaptive systems. This meeting brings together experimentalists, theorists and philosophers to discuss the physical principles underlying the emergence of complexity in biological systems, and how it is shaped by cooperative dynamical behaviour and selective pressures. Speakers will probe events in the history of life on Earth which marked qualitative changes in the complexity of biological systems, such as the origin of life or the appearance of multicellularity, and also discuss our growing quantitative understanding of evolution at the molecular scale.